Box office
Office selling event tickets
A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons can perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is frequently used, especially in the context of the film industry, as a metonym for the amount of business a particular production, such as a film or theatre show, receives. The term is also used to refer to a ticket office at an arena or a stadium.
01Etymology
Ceramic money boxes were used at the sixteenth-century Globe Theatre, Curtain Theatre and Rose Theatre in London, where many examples have been found during archaeological investigations. They were possibly used by the "gatherer" at the entrance to the theatres, who collected the admission money. There is disagreement, however, around whether the term originates from this time, as the objects could have been carried by the many snack-sellers attending the audiences; they too needed a convenient and secure way to collect their customers' cash.
There is no record of the term "box office" being used until the eighteenth century: it was being used from at least 1741, deriving from the office from which tickets for theatre boxes were sold. This is the derivation favoured by the Oxford English Dictionary.
02Related terminology
Total movie ticket sales were being termed box office from at least 1904.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Box office”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Ohio Theatre booth.jpg by Ɱ, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Box-office-6692.JPG by Myke2020 (talk) (Uploads), Public domain
- NPHS Performing Arts Center Ticket Window.jpg by PCHS-NJROTC, CC BY-SA 4.0
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